Spontaneous mutation in man.

Mutation is one of the basic phenomena of life. Without mutation, the gradual development of life from inorganic material would have been impossible, and the evolution of living beings from the first groups of molecules in which a primitive, information-carrying unit cooperated with an energy gaining device59 up to the present diversity of highly refined living organisms could not have occurred. Therefore, one would expect that mutation, and especially “spontaneous” mutation, i.e., that occurring naturally and without any detectable external reasons, would attract the research activity of many biologists, especially geneticists. Surprisingly, however, this is not the case. In most experimental studies—for example, on microorganisms, Drosophila or the mouse—research on spontaneous mutation is being carried out more or less as a sideline of other work, and the results are widely scattered.